Judicial and town officials join Robin McCusker on a tour of her Richmond property yesterday.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

RICHMOND Shortly before 2 p.m. yesterday, cars lined up along Bobwhite Terrace, a usually quiet residential street in the Wyoming section of Richmond.

Moments later, a judge and two sheriff officers emerged from their vehicles.

Waiting for them were lawyers, a zoning officer, and the property owner, who guided them past the rabbits, toward the chickens pecking away by the bushes. A long-haired cat watched the action from a side window, while a dog barked inside the house.

“This is my horse, Tabasco,” homeowner Robin D. McCusker said, coming to a stop near a small barn in the center of the yard. “He’s 24 years old, going partially blind on one eye.”

“That fence is electrified,” quickly warned her lawyer, Dawn M. Vigue.

“Yes, it is. Please, be careful,” McCusker added.

TABASCO — along with his byproduct — is at the center of a zoning dispute over whether he and the chickens can stay in a residential lot less than one acre in size.

The town’s zoning regulations allow horses and ponies to be kept in residential areas for personal use as long as the “actual lot size is two or more acres and density is limited to” one per acre.

Alternatively, the zoning ordinance allows “keeping of farm animals . . . as pets, or for recreational or educational purposes such as riding or appropriate 4-H Club activities and their incidental sale on a limited scale, provided there is adequate land area to prevent the creation of a nuisance of [sic] abutting properties.”

McCusker’s lot, part of the Cedar Hills cluster subdivision, is 92/100ths of an acre. The remainder of the land is open space owned commonly by all the subdivision residents.

The 47-year-old self-described animal lover — who said she gave up a rooster after neighbors complained about its crowing — has filed a special-use permit application with the Zoning Board to keep the animals.

The Board of Review is scheduled to hear the case on March 24.

ONCE A FARMING, rural community, Richmond — like many other communities throughout the state — is trying to come to terms with an evolving suburban identity.

And in doing so, it’s finding that things that were once common — such as animals living in close quarters with humans — are now escalating into costly and sometimes nasty disputes among neighbors.

Just around the corner from McCusker, Mark P. and Sandra L. Croce opted to give up their horse and pony instead of going through the costly and time-consuming process of applying for a special-use permit.

Throughout the state, such cases are relatively common and memorable.

REMEMBER A PONY named Sonny in Cranston? The case headed all the way to the state Supreme Court and it was determined that the miniature horse, all 33 inches of him, was still a horse and therefore legitimately prohibited by the homeowners association in the exclusive residential development where the owners lived. The owners bought a nearby farm and Sonny got a new home.

Less controversial was the case of Homer, a 40-pound Vietnamese pot-bellied pig in Seekonk.

(Fully-grown pot-bellied pigs can weigh three times as much.)

Arguing that the six-month-old Homer was not livestock but rather a pet — housetrained at that — that enjoyed neighborhood walks with him, last summer Carl Noelte secured a one-year special permit to keep the pig. There were conditions: Noelte had to finish fencing his yard, keep Homer on leash when out on walks, bathe him once a month, give the town building inspector a “manure-control plan,” and provide Homer with regular veterinary care.

In Hopkinton, the big stink last December was over biosolids — treated sewage sludge (human waste).

Originally, residents called town and emergency officials complaining of a possible gas leak.

In the end, the gaseous stench turned out to be a pile of “organic fertilizer” at Brook Knoll Farm.

Burrillville also had its little brush with manure — this one of animal origin — in September as it discussed an ordinance requiring dog owners to clean up after their pooches when they are on someone else’s property or on public land.

Councilman Kevin M. Blais sought to expand the ordinance’s scope to include all pet animals, arguing that horse manure is a bigger problem in Burrillville than dog waste is.

McCLUSKER, WHO grew up in Wakefield, said her family always kept animals.

She moved to Richmond in 1990 to be closer to the “country.”

The Washington County Fairgrounds, she points out, sit just about a mile from her house.

Her daughter — now a college student pursuing equestrian studies in upstate New York — joined 4-H.

At some point — McCusker said she couldn’t remember whether it was before or after her daughter was brown — the family bought Tabasco.

The name came with the horse, McCusker said.

Actually, McCusker kept a horse or pony on the property during at least two periods since 1992, Town Solicitor Karen R. Ellsworth said.

In 1995, after apparently keeping a pony on the property for about three years, McCusker filed an application for a special permit.

The application was later withdrawn.

In 2000 the town gave McCusker a two-year zoning certificate to stable Tabasco on the property for a 4-H project.

But complaints from neighbors kept coming — some threatened to sue the town, McCusker recalls — and the town asked her to remove the horse.

“Out of courtesy, I did that for the town,” McCusker said of sending the horse to a stable at an undisclosed location.

Then in 2006, Tabasco’s health deteriorated and he started losing weight rapidly, she said.

She moved Tabasco back home to care for him more closely, monitoring his activities and trying different feeds.

It worked.

Tabasco, who will be 24 in March, has regained much if not all of the weight. But he has also lost vision in one eye.

NEIGHBORS TOLD the town that McCusker brought the horse back in October 2006 and added the chickens last spring.

The town issued a violation notice on Nov. 1, 2006 for keeping the animals without the required permits.

Neighbors have repeatedly complained about the odor of the manure and the fact that some of the manure along with hay had been dumped in the subdivision’s common open space behind McCusker’s home.

McCusker denied dumping the manure improperly, saying she keeps a compost pile on her property and has used some of the manure to fertilize her garden. But she acknowledged having discarded some old hay on the common land.

Neighbors started complaining again last February.

After some back and forth, McCusker filed an application for a special-use permit on Oct. 5.

The case has been continued twice.

MEANWHILE, Paul R. McAdam, the town’s zoning official, inspected the property twice since then.

On Dec. 31 he said he saw a square, uncovered enclosure made of wooden pallets of approximately four feet located about 15 feet from the property line of McCusker’s next-door neighbor and approximately five feet from a drainage swale.

“I saw manure mixed with straw inside the enclosure,” McAdam said in an affidavit.

Moreover, he said, some of the “straw, and horse manure, had been spread on the ground under some pine trees near the wooden enclosure and adjacent to the drainage swale.”

McAdam said that he inspected the property on Feb. 8 from an adjacent lot and noticed that the enclosure had been enlarged “and now appears to be four feet by eight feet in size.”

“The enclosure was filled to the top with straw and horse manure,” McAdam said on an affidavit. “In addition, fresh straw and manure appeared to have been spread on the ground under the pine trees.

“I smelled the odor of fresh manure and urine near the enclosure and the pine trees.”

ON JAN. 22, between McAdam’s two inspections, the town filed a complaint in Washington County Superior Court, citing “the continuing public health and safety hazard presented by the manner in which Ms. McCusker is storing the manure” and “the nuisance it is causing in the neighborhood” and asking the court to order McCusker to remove the manure from her property while her application before the Zoning Board is pending.

Yesterday afternoon, Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson, along with two sheriff officers, visited the property.

In the end, McCusker agreed to store the manure on a surface impervious to water, covered, to prevent ground-water contamination.

The manure will have to be removed from the property at least once a week, pending the Zoning Board’s decision.

Judge Thompson will review the case again on March 27.

McCUSKER AND VIGUE are now preparing their case for the March hearing date, when McCusker said she will seek to keep the chickens — which she says she keeps for her own food production, namely the eggs — and the horse.

“Some people have swimming pools,” McCusker said.

“I would like to have a horse.”

marmenta@projo.com